Free Republic

During the pandemic, the Japanese government imposed draconian restrictions on its citizens, as did many other countries, including the United States, which had no lack of enthusiastic adherents. Many of those COVID measures were complicated by Japanese culture and social structure (slow vaccine rollouts, etc.), and the deaf ear the ruling government turned to the public when there was significant conflict between their plans and public wishes. As there is no viable political competition, there is little impetus for the government to heed the voice of the people....Japan’s inability to adapt structurally and culturally also made some of the more...

Polish MEP Grzegorz Braun destroys LGBT-themed exhibition in ParliamentVideo footage shows Catholic politician Grzegorz Braun tearing down pro-LGBT materials in the Polish Parliament building, after which he was banned from the Sejm by the Speaker.Polish Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Grzegorz Braun has destroyed a pro-LGBT exhibition in the Polish Parliament.In a video that went viral online, Braun is seen removing pro-LGBT display boards from their stands and bending them in half by stepping on them.The exhibition was displayed on Wednesday in the Sejm, Poland’s lower House of Parliament.Szymon Holownia, the Speaker of the Sejm, announced on X that...

Peru has ordered the Mexican ambassador to leave within 72 hours after Mexico granted asylum to the family of ousted Peruvian President Pedro Castillo. Mr Castillo was removed from office earlier this month after he tried to dissolve Congress.... ...Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called the removal of Mr Castillo undemocratic. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Tuesday the government was negotiating safe passage for the family of Mr Castillo, who were inside Mexico's embassy in the Peruvian capital Lima.... ...Peru's foreign ministry said in its social media accounts that it was expelling Mr Monroy because "of...

Peru has a female president for the first time, after ex-president Pedro Castillo was impeached - hours after he tried to dissolve parliament. Dina Boluarte - previously the vice-president - was sworn in after a dramatic day in Lima on Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Mr Castillo had said he was replacing Congress with an "exceptional emergency government". But lawmakers ignored this, and in an emergency meeting impeached him. He was then detained and accused of rebellion. Ms Boluarte, a 60-year-old lawyer, said she would govern until July 2026, which is when Mr Castillo's presidency would have ended. Speaking after...

PM Keir Starmer will aim to pass an emergency law on Saturday to "take control" of British Steel's plant in Scunthorpe, which is running out of raw materials to make steel The potential closure of Scunthorpe's British Steel plant would be devastating for workers and their families, the GMB union says If passed, the new law will give power to Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds to direct and control British Steel - and could allow nationalisation later down the line The PM and Reynolds expressed disappointment in British Steel's Chinese owner Jingye, which says it has been losing around £700,000 a...

Riding high off a surprisingly strong result in Germany’s federal elections on Sunday, members of the far-left Die Linke party chanted Antifa slogans as they entered the Bundestag parliament in Berlin on Tuesday. After facing the prospect of near-complete political irrelevance just several weeks ago, Die Linke (The Left) saw a late surge in the federal election campaign that netted the party around 8.8 per cent of the vote, over double where the radical party was polling just a couple months ago. Apparently emboldened by their strong showing, MPs gathered with Left leaders Jan van Aken and Ines Schwerdtner and...

Melbourne -- Australians celebrated and protested across the country on Sunday as Australia Day drew attention to political differences over Indigenous rights months out from a federal election. Australia Day marks a British colony being established at Sydney Cove on Jan 26, 1788, which eventually led to Britain claiming the entire country without a treaty with its Indigenous inhabitants. Indigenous rights advocates call Jan 26 “Invasion Day” and protest rallies have been held in major cities. Many argue that Australia's national day should not commemorate such a divisive event. Australia Day is usually a public holiday and because it fell...

Parliament tries to pass law outlawing marriage to 1st cousins. Guess who's dead-set against it. Transcript linked below video

MPs are to summon Elon Musk to testify about X’s role in spreading disinformation, in a parliamentary inquiry into the UK riots and the rise of false and harmful AI content, the Guardian has learned. Senior executives from Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok are also expected to be called for questioning as part of a Commons science and technology select committee social media inquiry. The first hearings will take place in the new year, amid rising concern that UK online safety laws risk being outpaced by rapidly advancing technology and the politicisation of platforms such as X....

Indigenous lawmakers broke into a tribal dance to protest a bill in New Zealand's parliament.To reject a piece of legislation proposed by the island country's libertarian party, a bunch of Māori members of Parliament (MPs) staged a protest by busting out the "haka," a Māori war dance traditionally used to terrify enemies on the battlefield.Māori members of New Zealand’s parliament disrupted the passage of a bill that would reinterpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, which uplifts Indigenous peoples. The MPs performed a haka—a traditional Māori dance and chant—causing the session to be suspended. pic.twitter.com/89VhB1aqAS— red. (@redstreamnet) November 14, 2024The disruption...

Organizers have planned protests in at least seven provinces on Thursday throughout Iraq in response to the introduction of amendments to a core family legal framework that could legalize child marriages, deprive widows of their inheritance, and facilitate sex slavery. The Iraqi Parliament began to debate amendments to the Personal Status Law on Sunday that would, critics say, effectively dissolve the country’s universal standards to protect women and girls on matters such as consent to marriage, alimony, and custody of children by allowing men to opt out, choosing traditional Shiite or Sunni Islamic mandates, instead. While child marriages, sex slavery,...

In a shocking display of political manipulation, the left-wing establishment, terrified of the rising right, has trampled on democratic principles by enforcing a cordon sanitaire to block Orban’s Patriots for Europe from their rightful positions, betraying the will of millions of voters.A disgraceful spectacle is unfolding in the European Parliament. The left-wing establishment has united to exclude Viktor Orbán’s new “Patriots for Europe” group from offices that are rightfully theirs. This coordinated effort, known as a cordon sanitaire, is a blatant attack on democracy, showing the left’s desperation as they face the growing power and influence of right-wing voices in...

For many years, I have testified and written about Antifa and its growing anti-free speech philosophy. Some Democratic leaders have embraced this violent movement, which continues to gain strength on campuses and its cities across the nation. It is also a global movement. That is reflected in the alarming election of Antifa candidates to the French National Assembly as well as the European Parliament. That is quite an accomplishment for a movement that President Joe Biden dismissed as “just an idea.”As discussed in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I explore the history...

"Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last," is how Winston Churchill, just months away from becoming Britain's wartime Prime Minister, described the appeasement that led to World War II. "All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. " The same could be said of France's snap election, in which everyone from French Stalinists to the country's business interests banded together to defeat the country's "far right" at the polls. But the far right is not the threat, and the crocodile snapping at everyone's...

A coalition of left-wing parties pulled off a stunning upset in the final round of France's parliamentary elections, relegating the right-wing National Rally to third place and seemingly guaranteeing paralysis in the French government. In the first round of voting last Sunday, Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) won 34 percent. The leftist New Popular Front (NFP) — a coalition of five parties that range from lunatic leftists and environmentalists to run-of-the-mill socialists — took 28 percent of the vote. French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance was essentially repudiated by the voters gathering only 20 percent. The election wasn't...

Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre went to church last Sunday, not once, not twice, but three times — to three evangelical churches in the Toronto area where he briefly participated in the services, made a short political speech and moved on. The three churches are all in ridings held by Liberal MPs and the congregants are mostly members of ethnic minority communities, which makes these visits smart politics for a campaigning Conservative leader. But observers say these visits are also groundbreakers if only because leaders of mainstream Canadian political parties have long avoided public events with evangelical Christians for fear those...

Sectarian politics is officially here to stay in Britain as a schism on the left saw multiple independent candidates best the Labour Party in Thursday’s general election after running on a pro-Palestinian platform. While the left-wing Labour Party has traditionally been able to count on the overwhelming support of the Muslim community in the UK, this support appears to be fracturing as new Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has attempted to move his party away from the antisemitism scandals and accusations of supporting radical Islamists that bedevilled his socialist predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. According to an analysis from the BBC, Labour...

@RaheemKassam EXCLUSIVE: Nigel Farage's first interview – with @RealAmVoice and @TheNatPulse – following his historic parliamentary victory in Clacton-on-Sea and the insurgency of his @reformparty_uk.

There are reports of protesters having been k*lled and wounded by gunfire Video

A radical Italian Antifa activist accused of attacking people with a hammer in Budapest has been elected to the European Parliament, potentially paving the way for her to be freed from custody in Hungary. Ilaria Salis, a 39-year-old schoolteacher and “anti-fascist” activist currently under house arrest in Hungary, has won a seat in the EU parliament on behalf of the Green-Left Alliance (AVS) in Italy, ANSA reports. Salis has been accused of being part of a leftist group of mostly Germans who allegedly attacked a group of supposed “neo-Nazis” on February 11th in 2023 as they honoured the Nazi Waffen...